A call for reformation

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If you skip through this message, be sure to read the call for reformation at the end.  Let me know what comments you may have.

There are many thoughts, insights and personal opinions flying around right now (including from this writer/podcaster) regarding the election, politics, the state of our nation and other current events.

I am sitting here after 2am listening to some worship and contemplating the state of the church.  Dutch Sheet’s recent letter, whether you sign off on it completely or not, is thought provoking.  Head on over to the front page on the blog and you’ll find it right below this post.

My strong feeling is this: the church, generally speaking, in our nation is like the frog in the kettle.  We are losing sensitivity, prophetic unction, discernment and true Biblical purpose.  We are voting in the churches (with our participation or lack thereof, gossip and level of giving) and in the voting booths on election day with the same intent: demand that we get what we want from the systems.

Whatever happened to, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country?”

Many voted with personal gain in mind over morality.  Before you point the finger, we in the church will often choose our church based on what we can get out of it.  Personal gain.  Judgment is coming to the house of God.  We need it.  We need God to touch all of us, make wrong things right and prepare us for a great end-time spiritual battle.

A growing number of churches have become focused at becoming moderate so as to attract the greatest number of people.  Churches are rapidly selling out and selling their services which have been adjusted not by the prophetic mandate from Heaven but from what the market demands.

Understand, I’m involved in church marketing, and I believe in it.  However, I don’t believe in losing focus, wandering in the desert and forsaking the Promised Land.  Our generation is at risk of perishing on this side of the promise.

We need a strike of prophetic lightening from Heaven.  The Church must lead this nation again.  We need a prophetic voice, a message, and a willingness to declare it humbly and boldly with no concern for our personal well being.

There is an emerging, underground, nameless, faceless remnant that is crying out night and day.  People who are hungry and who are willing to pray the price.  Let’s love our nation enough to say enough is enough.  We must pray.  We must love.  We must shape our nation and not be shaped by it.  Let’s really do it.  It’s time that we start to see entire cities transformed!  This can and should happen. 

Can you imagine an entire city that is full of the glory of God from border to border?  There are over 19,000 cities in this nation, and that is not happening on a city level in any of them.  We can’t presume to expect national revival if we don’t even have city revival.  What about a local church level revival?  Why are they so rare?  One reason stands out: personal revival is nearly non-existent.  If we are each burning men and women of God who are full of life, power, joy, passion and the prophetic word of the Lord, when we come together our churches will burn.  Then our cities and then our nation and the nations of the Earth.  We need a fire.  We need a reformation.

I was awakened a few years ago with a strong cry for reformation in the church.  Here’s some of what I received:

1. We must repent of prayerlessness
A call is being made for every believer to be immersed in prayer. Spiritual leaders must model such a lifestyle of prayer as our primary daily activity. Pastors and leaders- let’s agree to a minimum of one three hour prayer watch every day.
► Leonard Ravenhill said, “Pastors who don’t pray two hours a day aren’t worth a dime a dozen”
► Acts 6:4 “but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

2. We must repent of competition
It’s time to promote the City Church ahead of our local Church. Are we willing to lose people, money, our ministries and our reputations in order for God’s corporate dream of city-wide revival to explode?
► Phil 2:3 Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.

3. We must repent for being mindful of man ahead of God
We are to once again lead with a bold prophetic mantle. As a leader, the primary role is to hear God in prayer and to declare his Word to the people. The body must renounce consumerism in the Church by asking not what our Church can do for us but what we can do for our Church.
► Mat 16:23 But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

4. We must repent for forsaking the house of prayer
There is a call for every church in the city to establish prayer as its primary ministry- and to be modeled and led by senior leadership.
The primary purpose of the Church is undeniably night and day prayer for the nations. Fervent prayer should be taught and modeled as the dominant activity of every believer.
► Is 56:7 Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, And make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
Will be accepted on My altar; For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

5. We must repent of pride
God resists the proud, and this city can’t afford for
God to move away from us. We must repent, humble ourselves and cry for Jesus to come!
► James 4:6 “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”

6. We must repent for quenching the Holy Spirit
Our cry must be, “Come as you are and do what you want!” Sunday services should be marked by significant and earth-shaking supernatural moves of the Holy Spirit.
► 1 Thes 5:19 Do not quench the Spirit.

7. We must repent for resisting the prophetic
Now, more than ever, we need to hear the Word of the Lord. We must teach every believer how to hear God, how to steward that Word and how to take responsibility in the fulfillment of that Word.
► 1 Thes 5:20 Do not despise prophecies.

8. We must embrace and teach on dreams, visions and the experiential reality of the presence of God
If someone were to be on the moon, would he want to learn about air or experience air? Our churches must experience the fresh flowing air of the Holy Spirit again.
► Acts 2:2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.

9. We must repent for canceling services, closing the church doors and lowering the expected commitment
We have submitted to a deadly and apathetic American culture, and it’s time to lead the way and bring reformation to that culture. The Church must dominate our calendars again.

10. We must cry out for the love of God to weigh on His church in the form of both mercy and judgment
Pray for God’s judgment to rest on you, your church and this city so as to ensure wrong things are made right, holiness prevails and God reigns supreme.
► 1 Pet 4:17 For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those
who do not obey the gospel of God?

11. We must admit there are demons and that they must be dealt with
Not through programs and projects but through prophetic proclamation. A unified assault on the kingdom of darkness will result in mass deliverance in our city.
► James 4:7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

12. We must be available for repositioning
Lets do away with the redundancy of a church on every corner. Many churches in our city should close. Those pastors would then assume more appropriate positions of service in other churches. The goal is one City Church, many departments, unified leadership and individualized roles.

13. We must again become Holy Spirit sensitive instead of seeker sensitive
People aren’t looking for something worth living for, but rather for a cause worth dying for. Show them the cross. The normal New Testament Church experience is one of extreme manifestations of God, death to self, prophetic preaching and an unapologetic invasion into the culture.
► Mark 8:34 When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 35 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.

14. We must repent for presenting a watered down, socially acceptable gospel
Salvation requires death, surrender and commitment to the plans of God.
► Mark 10:21 Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.” 22 But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

15. We must repent for emphasizing what people can get instead of what they are to give
To enter a church with the expectation of leaving with more than you entered with is to embrace the same spirit the money changers did. We must again, with fear and trembling, enter the House of Prayer prepared to make a sacrifice and give an offering.
► Mat 21:12 Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ “

16. We must call for the fear of the Lord to return to our Churches and city
► Prov 23:17 Do not let your heart envy sinners, But be zealous for the fear of the Lord all the day; 18 For surely there is a hereafter,And your hope will not be cut off.

17. We must repent for rebellion, self-government, lawlessness and an independent spirit
This is evidenced through church hopping and by leaving a church without being sent out by the leaders. This results in compromised missions, a divisive spirit and a splintering of the body. Accountability and submission to authority must again return to the Church.
► Heb 13:17 Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let
them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.

18. We must repent for embracing a religious spirit
Religion is man’s attempt to use God to get what he wants. It’s time to cry out for God to remove our man made structures and advance his Kingdom in our city!

19. We must repent for not praying intently for our leaders
Their failure is our failure.
► 1 Tim 2:1 Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, 2 for kings
and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.

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